The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

I love those hard drive "carry boxes" Very handy. Especially for organization.

 

You don't have to buy ASRock you can get the ASUS or Gigabyte for much less so it is still smarter to go AM3+ right now if you have to.

ASUS M5A78L-M LX AM3+ AMD 760G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard $73

GIGABYTE GA-880GMA-USB3 AM3+ AMD 880G HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard $105

 

THat's not a bad price. I think I spent that much on my current board.

 

Steve,

I only used the Asrock as an example, because it was the most full featured of the two AM3+ motherboards that Newegg offered at the time, and Oman7 already has a high end socket AM3 motherboard, and I sure as heck wouldn't be recommending any $65 Asus motherboar!.

I don't personally use, buy, or sell any Asus motherboards, and only recommend them when it's a motherboard that suits someone's specific needs. Their customer and technical service flat sucks. They tried to stick me for $40 for a bad LGA775 socket, by showing me a picture of one that was damaged, and weren't even smart enough to realize the the serial number on the board in the picture was not my board's serial number! When we sorted that out, they kept my board for 27 days, and when it came back it had the same problems that I had originally sent it in for. Don't even get me started on my problems with the P5N-E SLI for a customer! I haven't owned an Asus motherboard in over 4 years, and have used GigaByte motherboards ever since with great success! 965P-DS3, P35-DS3R and my current 790X-UD4P. I had problems with the 790X, but I've recently discovered that all of those problems were caused by my Re-Built Sceptre monitor!

The GIGABYTE GA-880GMA-USB3 AM3+ you linked, is a pretty large step down from the 790X-UD4P AM2+ in my current build, and I don't want to waste money for On board Graphics, when I will never use them. The only option for socket AM3+, in the same league as my 790X, is the GA-890FXA-UD5 AM3+.

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3781#ov

Unless the $180 price was to drop about $40 or more, I wouldn't be interested in making any changes at this time. Even then I would rather wait until AMD gets everything sorted out with Bulldozer first!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Sam,

Both my near 5 year old 965P-DS3 and the 4 year old P35-DS3R are still running 100%, and the P35 with the E6750 in it is overclocked to 3.6GHz. It runs 24/4, started on Monday morning and shut down late Thursday! Everything on both is still fully functional!

Russ

 

Russ,

I didn't know ASUS's service has gotten so bad but I'll tell you ASRock will do the same thing, maybe because they are a sister company. And like I've stated before ASRock has horrible compatibility with USB and some RAM modules. ASRock may be enticing for their features which is what drew me into them but I won't buy them for some time and would buy a ASUS before ASRock as at least when they work they work, unlike ASRock!

Also my point wasn't what you would or should do, which is pretty obvious if you read my reply to Oman7 and my point still holds true whether or not you want to step down or pay more at this time. It is never a perfect world unfortunately!

Stevo

On the Sam note, I've still got a couple of old K6's and prior that are still running 100% for more than 10 years now if not 15 years+. 5 years for a MB/CPU is no biggy from my experience. Maybe it is an Intel thing they don't last more than 5 years... LOL

 

Not had a problem with my current 890X board Russ. AFAIK this board specifically is an AM3 remake of the 790X-UD4P. Made my rewiring job especially easy and the whole re-build took ~half an hour. This is a 790X chipset in an 890X series board, so it's functionally the same thing with some newer technology standards added. Not sure if the 790X chipset affects the AM3+ standard so this might be an AM3 only board. Maybe it's not the best option for you but I found it to be a perfect replacement.

 

Steve,

You couldn't pay me enough to get me to buy anything from Asus anymore. A couple of months ago I decided to try a couple of their Optical drives. One of them is already dead, and I'll be damned if I'm going to spend almost $9 to ship a $20 drive back for replacement. After the stunt they pulled with the P5N-E SLI, where the only people who got the good ones were the earliest buyers, I'll never trust their motherboards again! They had Leo Laporte (The Computer Guy), on the radio all hyped up over the P5N-E SLI with an Intel E4300 being the greatest thing since sliced bread because you could overclock the E4300 over 100% quite easily, and many reached 4.0GHz with a 1.80GHz chip. Once full production came into effect, you were very fortunate to be able get the E4300 over 3.2GHz. I managed 3.0GHz with a build for a friend of mine in Chicago. Asus sold many thousands of them, and then denied that there were any problems with the board, even when their own forum had over 25 pages of problems with the P5N-E. What they had done was swap garbage level components for the high quality components of the original, and it wound up being a huge disaster for Asus. We are talking board level components here! Transistors, diodes, Capacitors and resistors. They engineered all the good out of the design! Since I'm the one who discovered what they had done, and reported it on this forum, I've had no faith in anything they've made since! As far as I'm concerned, the US Government should have gone after them for Fraud, and made them recall every damn one of them! A number of folks here and on another forum were openly questioning whether I was finally past it, myself included, after I had to order a third motherboard! I know that after 3 motherboards, I wasn't so sure that I wasn't! LOL!! They charged $600 each for two advanced replacement motherboards, and it took my Customer almost 9 months to get her $1200 back! I won't do business with people like that again!

I understood what you said to Oman7, but as you pointed out I decided to step down! If Bulldozer was only a few months away, I would think differently, but with at least 6 more months to wait for Bulldozer at the earliest, and a lot of talk that it may not be ready until well into 2012, I'll wait and stay with what I have! Remember, no one ever wants to hear about the Labor Pains! They just want to see the baby! LOL!!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Estuansis,

The GA-890FXA-UD5 is specifically an AM3+ motherboard with a 890FX NB, and an SB850 SB. It's a further refinement of your board, which was a socket AM3 refinement of mine. No 790X here!

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3781#ov

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Nah it's most likely an Asus thing. After having had four of their boards and not one last more than 18 months (the other three less than 9 months) 3 years is quite something. It's also worth pointing out that the MSI I had in my ancient P3 system showed no sign of faults at the age of 6 years when it was last tested. I couldn't really give valid tests for 10 years because at this stage, I have never run a system that long.

 

That's really too bad, I haven't bought an ASUS board in a long time, maybe 4+ years ago so I wouldn't doubt they are shat now, they use to be very good but at that time they were also too expensive as well.

Intel was better when they mainly built their own boards with a few exceptions as they have allowed others to build their platforms more now I think things have got worst instead of better and because they charge so much for 3rd party manufacturing the costs haven't really dropped either, again too bad.

I wouldn't deal with them either after going through what you did Russ like I said I've had similar problems with ASRock but maybe not quite as severe, however I have several boards still of theirs that are supposedly good but don’t play well with products I need them too. I really like the features of ASRock but won't buy them since they aren't fully compatible or play well with several things.

I gave up Gigabyte years ago for exactly what you are complaining about with ASUS I’m so happy that they are good again and will be a board of choice for future builds, upgrades, or repairs.

Stevo

 

reports saying bulldozer is coming around computex time. Though who knows. My P35 boards still going strong from asus.

 

Sam,

I had a 100MHz Pentium that's about 17 years old, that wasn't worth giving away. My neighbor was looking for something to use for word processing and spreadsheets as he was going back to school, so I gave it to him. It was in my closet for about 15 years, and I didn't even know if it still worked. Sucker fired right up. The only real problem I ran into was finding 4x32 MB 80 pin simm memory for it because I needed 128MB of ram to make the lan card work. Keep in mind that if you had a computer of that vintage in 1994, you needed to be well off, because you were looking at about $600 worth of memory. I managed to locate 4 simms in my old parts and I put Windows 2000 on it. He is still going to school and still uses it every day!

I'm pretty sure that the dry climates I've lived in since 96 have had something to do with it lasting so long. Everything in it is original except the lan card and hard drive. Even the drive controller card (no onboard) still works perfectly I also upgraded the Trident video card to 4MB, and added a PCI usb 2.0 4 port card. Slow, but it does do the job!

EDIT: I almost forgot, it also has a Creative labs Sound Blaster pro with a 1x CD Rom!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

I have an original Xbox which is essentially a slightly proprietary off-the-shelf PC. The date on it puts it at late 2003 so that's about 8 1/2 years so far of regular use with no problems. Nvidia chipset, Nvidia Sandstorm sound chip(amazing), the works. Only have had to re-TIM it once and so far it's also cool and quiet. Might need a DVD drive but still that's amazing longevity for a modern console or PC. Especially when the successor is famous for its multitudes of issues. Just a little cleaning here and there and it works without a hitch.

Since this thread is going a bit slow I'll share something I figured out recently. I modified my own method for repairing scratched CDs/DVDs. If you have any experience with polishing or rubbing compounds you have all the skills you need to repair most disks.

- Scuff down the surface really well with a whitening toothpaste to take off the deep scratches. Rub in a circular motion but don't press too hard so as not to damage the disk. Toothpaste has a mild abrasive in it that gives it similar qualities to a really coarse rubbing compound. Clean it by rinsing with warm water then wipe the disk off with a soft terry cloth or old cotton sock/T-shirt.

- Then move to Wizard's Final Cut automotive buffing compound(any good quality clearcoat buffing compound will work). It is a finer grit than the toothpaste and will remove the rest of the deep scratches, but will still leave a lot of finer swirl marks. Rinse again with warm water and wipe down with a soft cloth to clean. Some disks will work perfectly after this point so you can skip the next step.

- For the third step you move to Meguiars Cleaner Wax for the final finish(or any mildly abrasive car wax). Rub one coat in really well to polish out the remaining scratches then apply a second coat and leave it a few minutes to dry. Then wipe it off with a clean cotton cloth and the disk comes out like new. Important, the final finish cannot be rinsed because it needs to stay on the surface of the disk and fill in the scratches much like it does in automotive clearcoat. The wax will dry to a fairly hard finish after a few hours but you can test the disk right away after step 4.

- When finished use a soft cotton cloth(old sock worked for me) to buff out the disk and remove any traces of your rubbing compound. If the disk does not work after using the cleaner wax, repeat with the Wizards Final Cut then the Cleaner Wax again.

Some disks will be more finicky than others. Deep scratches need to be gone over a few extra times with the toothpaste to even the surface. Some disks will work fine after just the Wizards Final Cut, but some were really finicky until I used the Meguiars Cleaner Wax. This method has successfully resurrected 5 of my Xbox games and 3 PS2 games. When done properly your disk should have a near-perfect mirror finish. Overall time spent is probably 20-30 minutes a disk. Don't be afraid to rub too much, the plastic surface on CDs and DVDs is ultra thick. You're trying to create an even and consistent surface. I have successfully been able to take disks from completely non-working to loading faster and more smoothly than they did before they stopped working. All it takes is a little patience.

 

Interesting technique Jeff. I'll have to keep that in mind.

Well, it's that time again. I've got a build I'm doing for somebody. Funny thing is, he started out saying he wanted 16Gb of Ram LOL! I thought that was kind of funny. I explained to him that I'm only using 4Gb. He thought that was impressive(i'm somewhat of an expert to my chums). He decided after my explaining to him, that 8Gb would be good. I told him that's way more than adequate. And almost necessary if he does intense gaming, and intense multitasking. He seems comfortable with the decision. And I seem comfortable with my decisions. He wants a powerful computer, while maintaing an agreeable price. I believe I've done that.

CPU-Athlon II 640 Propus

Motherboard-Gigabyte GA-880GMA-USB3 AM3+

Memory/Ram-G-Skill F3-10600CL9D-4GBNS X 2

Powersupply-Debating

Case/tower-COOLER MASTER ELITE 335 RC-335-KKN1-GP

Hard drive-WD5001AALS

What do you think? I have to keep it around $450

 

Oman7,

Two suggestions. First the CPU. Save $10 and buy the Phenom IIx2 555BE. This is the final batch and they are about 99% certain to unlock both cores. Easy as pie to unlock with that motherboard. Even as a dual core, it's almost as fast as the 940 Propus, and it's a certainty that you will get at least a triple core out of it, but being the last production run, I know you will get all 4 cores working because these are nothing but 955s with two crippled cores!

AMD Phenom II X2 555 Black Edition
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103846

take the $10 you save here and get this memory

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231438

Much faster, and you still wind up a fer bucks cheaper overall. The combination works so good, my customer gave me a $20 tip!

Russ

 

go for 8gb 2x4GB modules

 

Hmmm, I don't know. This guy doesn't know anything about overclocking. And I hate to do it, only to have problems arise later. At least with the propus, it's a guaranteed Quad. I'll think about it

The Ram is certainly a better idea. I'll do that. Hopefully I don't have to manually reach those timings though. Seems to be a thing about AMD boards. Ram generally doesn't run at its supposed stock settings. Mine for instance, I had to manually change...

Aren't the 4Gb modules more expensive? I'll look into it.

Agreeable, looking at these
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231417

 

Shaff,

Unless there's a 64 bit OS, it's worthless!

 

Oman7,

I don't know if you noticed, but the ram I linked you is Cas 8, 8-8-8-24. I didn't have to fool with the timings at all. It ran real fast, even as a dual core on the 785GN-US2H. Thruput was excellent because of the 2MB L2 and 6MB L3 Cache. If he's not overclocking it, then I would absolutely go with the x2 555BE. The 4x512 L2 cache really hurts the performance, compared to the 555BE.

Unless the OS is 64 bit (which I wouldn't recommend at the moment if it's Win7 because of some recent severe security problems), 8 GB of memory is worthless. You didn't mention the OS!

BTW, do not open any emails, even if they are from friends if it says No Subject. Work that out with you friends. One of the tip-offs is that it's also sent to the sender, and always is sent to several other people as well I've been getting a lot of them in the last 3-4 months from Fred and Rick. They are all HTML files that will permanently destroy your hard drive and render it useless. It roaches the drive's bios chip, and it's toast! The computer will no longer even see it, not even in the setup! I can't believe that Rick decided to open one of the HTMLs and he's lost 3 drives so far! You also need to watch out for the AntiVirus Virus that's going around. Google it! some bad sh!t!

Russ